Musician Michael Franti, frustrated that news coverage of the Iraq war skipped past the people living inside it, flies to Baghdad with a video camera, a guitar, and a small crew that includes two human-rights lawyers, his drum tech, a retired U.S. Army captain, and a beauty salon owner. They stay at a hotel outside the Green Zone, and Franti spends nights waiting to hear whether anything will happen to them. He plays music for Iraqis in their homes, then travels to the occupied Palestinian territories to hear accounts of hours-long waits at checkpoints, and later returns to Israel to meet families who lost relatives to the conflict, at one point jamming Bob Marley songs with Israeli soldiers. The film comes out of more than 200 hours of footage Franti shot himself, cut with songs he wrote during and after the trip. There is no narrator laying out policy; the argument is carried entirely by whoever is in front of the camera talking about checkpoints, car bombs, or what it takes to keep living under occupation.